Anyone else from Reddit feeling weird seeing this exchange?
Yes, it’s a weird one. We got used to the fact that everything is pretty much free on the internet. Unfortunately, nothing is free, we either pay with out personal data, watching and interacting with ads or through subscriptions and paywals.
There is just no incentive for people to provide good content on the internet unless they have other means of sustaining themselves or they charge for it.
For instance, there is so much free stuff thanks to developers making their hard work open source. However, they are only able to do it because even if they are not getting payed for this, either they have a job that pays for other work they do or they have access to other means of financial support like family for instance. And I am not saying that much of open source (not all) is not essentially people giving away their hard work for free but I am saying that if the choice was to make some program for free and go hungry or charge for it and have a meal then we all know what it would look like.
I see you point but I think you are being harsh here. It is clear that it is not to be taken literally that Mastodon is nothing like Twitter in therms of looks. I think the spirit of the OPs comment is that it is the style of conversations, atmosphere and culture that each of them foster what makes them somewhat different.